Web Summit gathers over 42,000 participants in Dublin

This year’s edition of Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland greeted about 42,000 participants from over 135 countries, including participating startups and speakers from Eastern Europe, a market which we focus on heavily.

The first day features keynote speakers like David Markus – VP of Messaging Products at Facebook, Edwin Van der Sar – CMO at Ajax, Bill Ford – Executive Chairman at Ford, Yancey Strickle – Co-Founder of Kickstarter and even Mike Krieger, Co-Founder of Instagram, and much more.

An amazing atmosphere was present at the exhibition halls of startups in different stages and categories, where people were buzzing through to get to know the latest and top selected startups that got invited for the greatest event. We saw the names of Dentem from Albania and Fingermarket from Kosovo.

The Minister of Economic Development of Kosovo, Blerand Stavileci and Drin Mulliqi from the same Ministry, were participating speakers at the Technology, economy and first world problems at the Society Stage, where they discussed with fellow folks Robbie Vitrano, Tim Williamson (Idea Village) and Michael Moynihan (Center for Economic Transformation) on how Kosovo and New Orleans recovered after the devastation, one from war and one from a natural cause.

Stavileci announced a couple of plans for the future, including plans for a new tech park in Prishtina, while Mulliqi emphasized that Kosovo can compete in terms of services delivery for IT companies, as it is located close to the talent and to Europe. On the other hand, the Robbie and Tim, showed off the importance of the entrepreneurial mindset and how everyone suddenly became an entrepreneur as everything was destroyed.

Highlights of the day

Of course, the highlight of the day were the speakers where Mike Krieger told the audience his vision for the network’s future and how 75 percent of photographs taken today are snapped on smartphones. While David Markus talked about The messaging era is definitely now, where he showed how Facebook is reinventing the marketing paradigm.

We want to reinvent communications for billions of people. And Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter’s Co-Founder chatted with David Rowan of WIRED Magazine on Centre Stage about the path to independence and real value, while Bill Ford – Executive Chairman at Ford said that the future is moving twice as fast as we’re imagining and the autonomous cars or inter-communication in traffic is already out there.

One important thing to mention from today is that Machine Learning seems to be an important part of our future as every product seem to be in deep connection with it. If you’re around, read on here on what not to miss for tomorrow.

Digital Spoiler explores the startup ecosystem of the Balkans, through inspiring stories, latest news, interviews, and even in-depth content about each country of the region and the established startups.